The Sad Case of Richard Lapointe:
Update from Robert Perske
In the Summer 1996 issue of the Newsletter of the Network on Ethics and Intellectual Disability, Robert
Perske reported on the case of Richard Lapointe, who at the time was a 46-year-old dishwasher diagnosed with
Dandy-Walker syndrome that had caused life-long mental and physical disabilities. He had been sentenced to
life without parole plus 60 years after signing three conflicting confessions to the 1987 rape and murder of an
88-year-old woman while claiming he could not remember being at the scene of the crime. The contradictions
in the accounts led Robert Perske and other advocates to conclude that events could not have occurred in the
manner claimed in the trial. Earlier this year Mr. Perske reported the outcome of new legal proceedings before
Judge Stanley T. Fuger in the Superior Court in the Tolland Judicial District in Connecticut that was seeking a
new trial on grounds of ineffective legal counsel and suppressed evidence.
Like many of you, my mind has
experienced a tornado of anguish.
Now that it is settling down I want
to take my stand regarding the case
of Richard Lapointe.
Ever since Judge Fuger recently
delivered that scathing ruling against
Richard Lapointe, my brain has
indeed been caught up in an awful
anguish. I am appalled that Judge
Fuger admitted, on the opening of
the trial, that he had not even read
the case. I was also appalled that he
threw the case out in the middle of
the hearing. And on top of that, he
ordered the lawyers to never ever
bring this case back into the courts
again.
Like you, I have come to know
and care about our soft little, concrete
thinking friend with Dandy-Walker
Syndrome, with hearing aids and thick
glasses who as a kid was nicknamed
Mr. Magoo, who only walks and
never runs, but still proudly tells me
“I survived five shunt operations in
my brain.” He has also told me that
when taunts and jeers are thrown at
him, “It takes a better man to walk
away.” Why couldn’t Judge Fuger
ponder these facts?
Why couldn’t Judge Fuger see
that Richard could have never
committed that raging athletic
murder that included brutal blows to
the face, boy-scout-knotted ligatures
around the neck and hands, raping
He has also told me that when
taunts and jeers are thrown at
him, “It takes a better man to
walk away.”
of an old woman with a blunt object,
carrying her 160-pound body to
another location, burning the handle
off a knife, and setting the apartment
on fire in three places?
Instead, Judge Fuger eluded that
our defense lawyers’ case was an
offense to the holy writ of Habeas
Corpus. But I guess that’s the way
technical judges think.
So what is left to do now? Thus
far, all DNA in Richard’s case that
we knew about was used up back
in 1990 while the prosecution
began to build their case. Even
so, our Centurion Ministry lawyer
and investigator are continuing to
spend time and money and greathearted energy trying to scrape for
something that still may have a
small speck of readable DNA on it.
Steve Drizin, the assistant
director of The Center on Wrongful
Convictions based at Northwestern
University School of Law, claims
that it is very tough to get an
exoneration without DNA. For
example, Connecticut recently
and quickly exonerated James
Tillman as soon as they discovered
game-over DNA. That made it a
remarkably easy case. So I anguish
that Richard’s case will be so much
harder to solve.
On the other hand, The
Centurions never take a case if they
do not believe deeply in their heart
that their client is innocent. They
have told us that they will keep
moving forward.
For information about Richard Lapointe’s case see:
http://www.friendsofrichardlapointe.com/
The Newsletter of the Network on Ethics and Intellectual Disabilities, Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 2008